7
“The more you yearn for happiness, the less happy you are; the more honours are bestowed upon you, the more you want to renounce them,” wrote N. in his notebook. “That is how you console yourself, sitting in smothering silence. Not long ago, the City of People Ahead of Their Time called me to live there as a respected citizen, but I declined. I don’t consider myself a person ahead of my time. And anyway, I don’t like adjectives about the word ‘person...’
Then he decided there was more emotion than meaning in what he had written. He turned the page and began writing afresh. He spent the whole morning thinking about his night-time visitor, and this time the text in his notebook was given the name: “Treatise on the Human Dimension.”
“The gadget known as a ‘heightometer’ does not measure
